Binary Instincts
by BeeTeesKeys
Summary: Nathaniel Thack is one of the only survivors of an alien outbreak on a WY installation. That also means he's one of the only people left to blame, and someone has to pay. But history repeats itself and Nate is left trying to duplicate his escape, this time with an unlikely and dangerous counterpart at his side. A re-write of my older story.
1. Chapter 1: Copilot

_AN: This is a complete re-write of my story "Problems of a Dual Nature". __I started writing this story back when I was in high school, and bored. Now I'm almost out of college and not much has changed, though I'd like to think I'm a little more mature, a little smarter. I sure as heck paid out the rear for it. A couple days ago I saw someone had followed one of my old stories, and said to myself, "Wow. People still read that?" And even though it's a handful of people a month or so, I'm still surprised. I wrote it back in my awkward teenage years and never finished it. __So I decided I needed to finally finish this thing, at least for my own peace of mind; I can't stand reading incomplete fics. So while I don't promise it will be any good, I do promise to try and finish it. _

_So I started by going back through and trying to familiarize myself with the plot, and holy cow I was a bad writer. I was also like 15 at the time so there's that. I'm pretty sure back then I hit almost every red flag I can think of. I think I'm happier if I go back and fix the problems I saw in my work, instead of just picking up where I left off. __This should be more or less a straight rewrite all the way up to the point where I left off. Maybe I'll finish a chapter every other week or so. __Wish me luck, and I hope you like this rewrite more than you like the original. I hope I do too._

"_I am altering the timeline. Pray I don't alter it any further." _

**Chapter 1: Copilot **

The Weyland-Yutani corporation is vast, powerful, and nearly omnipresent. Its various child-companies and subsidies create products from video game software and mass produced interstellar shuttles all the way to military training equipment and prefabricated project housing. But the core of W-Y was research and development. Every single venture that they undertook was rooted in their immense R&D budget. No research avenue was left unexplored, not even; if rumors were to be believed, genetic manipulation to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Finding a job as an employee of W-Y wasn't all that difficult. Your nearest fuel depository is likely owned, operated and staffed by W-Y. But finding a well-paying job it a bit harder. For their most closely scrutinized departments it was nearly impossible. Human Genome and Genetics. Artificial Intelligence. Advanced Materials Engineering. Nathaniel graduated nearly a half decade ago, by calendar time. Factor in interplanetary cryosleep and it felt only like a couple years. He attended the top private university, and left top of his major class, with a degree in Materials Engineering, and proceeded to relentless hound every major W-Y conference, seminar, and public-relations event that he could find, hunting for the job of his dreams.

He didn't find it, and eventually he caved to a recruiter who offered him an entry-level position as security management. It required some advanced training but the recruiter implied after a couple years that he could move upwards into the research position he truly wanted. At least Nate would be able to observe from a distance. After being out of university for almost a year, this was a good enough compromise. He got the required training and shipped out to his facility, not that he was told where that was until he had signed mountains of contracts and non-disclosure agreements. Top-secret and all that.

Everything went smoothly, or what passed as smoothly for working at a job he lacked the real experience and training for. Still he scraped by for the next two years, and even met a cute girl. They got along well together. But eventually his lack of training and experience caught up with him. Maybe it was simply bad luck. But nonetheless, there was an Outbreak. That was almost a month ago now.

Everything hurt. His eyes were stinging and swollen, his muscles ached, and it hurt to breathe. His chest felt too tight and his nose was a mash of bruised flesh. He tried futilely again to reposition and stretch, but the restraints that kept him firmly attached to the gurney wouldn't let him move.

When he was brought here, he had thought it was a hospital. The happy ending to a long and painful time, trapped in a secret facility under thousands of tons of rock, where every other living soul was dead or dying. Or a living weapon.

_I suppose that the biological weapons research division was showing some results finally. Whatever those creatures were surely wrote security off easily enough. Or perhaps not, seeing as I'm pretty sure the creatures started their rampage in that division._

It was not a hospital. They were circumspect at first, with some suited-up lawyers questioning him on what exactly went wrong, what happened at the site on Clarsus-08. They initially dodged his questions about the aftermath. Then when he pressed they simply outright refused to tell him where he was. When he tried to leave they stopped him with force. With indiscriminate force. It felt like they'd broken what little of him remained whole, and beat the rest of him soundly into unconsciousness. Now he was chained to the gurney itself.

The room was almost completely empty, save for him and his bed. The walls and floors were a smooth matte material, and the door was the same thing. There was the customary access-panel next to the door, but all the lights on it were off, not accepting any input. Even if he could get out of his restraints and off this bed, the pressure-sealed door would have been impossible to open. The only other defining feature of the room was the outline of a pressure hatch in the dead center of the ceiling, and the distinctive black bubble of a security camera in the corner of the room.

One of the lights recessed into the ceiling was flickering on and then back off every couple of seconds. Under that damaged light, he saw it, one of the things that now haunted his nightmares. One of the little spider-like aliens. He was sure W-Y had a name for them but he didn't know it. They were like wasps, injecting their prey with an egg that grew inside their victim, and then ate them from the inside before erupting in a gory mess. He'd seen it happen once, inside the hell that site Clarsus-08 had become.

It wasn't moving. He hoped they if he held still, perhaps it wouldn't notice him. He knew it was a futile hope.

* * *

Wellan woke up in the middle of falling, before crashing to the concrete floor. He swore harshly, clutching his head before he stood and righted his chair. He'd been tipping his chair on two legs, and he must have dozed off during his shift. Normally he was on duty as a lab technician, but today he was stuck on monitor duty, watching the Coward to make sure nothing went wrong with his execution.

It was a boring task, about as intellectually stimulating as watching paint dry. Wellan didn't mind one bit. The boredom was worth every second if he got his satisfaction. He was sitting in a dim room with a bank of monitors in front of him. Several of them displayed medical information he wasn't qualified enough to understand, and a couple showed camera feeds in both visible wavelength and infrared. From the little he understood of the medical information, he could see increased brainwaves, respiration, and heartbeat.

_Ah see here, looks like the Coward's awake._

He adjusted his headset, thumbed a large button on the console, and crooned into the microphone.

"Good morning, sleeping beauty. Have a nice nap?"

The heartbeat spiked on the monitor. The Coward's response was too quiet to make out until he adjusted the volume. His voice was rough, filled with fear.

"_-of here. There's a Spider. Please, help me!"_

Wellan smiled, though it was closer to a rictus than a real smile. "Oh dear, a spider? Is it a very big one? I'm quite sure it won't hurt you."

The coward was still whispering, harsher now. "_Not that kind of spider! An alien! Can't you see it? It's right under your cam! I've seen what they can do!_"

Wellan could see it, he'd watched it as it was dropped into the room hours ago, watched with anticipation as it did its job. He dropped all pretense of friendliness, his voice was ice. "I'm sure you have seen what they can do; watched as they killed your comrades while you hid, _Coward_."

"_I did what I had to do, to survive! I'm surprised any of us made it out at all._"

"Alas, you seem to be mistaken. No one made it out." Wellan's voice was full of fake apology again. "All hands lost at sea, so to speak. As for the -what did you call it? A Spider?- As for the spider I'm afraid you were down for the count, and slept right through the start of the show."

The heartbeat on the monitor spiked again, and the Coward's face grew pale. On a different monitor, a second smaller heartbeat remained calm, slow, steady. But growing stronger.

"But don't worry. I've been told the finale, _is to die for!_"

Wellan laughed. He laughed and turned the microphone off as his laughs turned to sobs. Wellan would see that Blayne was avenged. He'd watch and he'd smile as the Coward paid for his sins. It wouldn't bring her back, but maybe it would make him feel a little better. Maybe.


	2. Chapter 2: A Standard L84 Incubation

_AN: It's been a fair bit of time since the last chapter, about 6 months, and since the world's kinda gone to shit, figured I'd add to the suffering a bit. Enjoy! Or don't. If there's something that didn't make sense, post a review and I'll update and clarify where needed. Or not, if it's supposed to be unclear. _

_Quick Edit: I may end up changing the rating for this story as it progresses. I like my violence and I like my swearing. I'll find out as I write it, I suppose. Also, thank you to those of you who reviewed, it was in the end what reminded me that I really ought to write more of this. It's a good creative exercise, and it makes me happy that some folks enjoy what I write._

**Chapter 2: A Standard L84 Incubation**

This is fine. Nate had been in tight spots before, and he would be again. He'd make it through this one. Well, he'd never been strapped wrist-and-ankle to a table by an interplanetary corporation before. But he'd pull through, talk his way out, or fight his way out. He'd been in rough situations before. At least he still had the dignity of pants. _This is fine._

He glanced back to the Spider still laying under the flickering light. It felt like hours since the intercom had switched off. He'd shouted at the ceiling, made rude gestures at the camera, anything he could think of to get the man on the comm to come back, but nothing had worked. Maybe it's because he couldn't get the whole arm motion in, what with his wrists bound to the table. And in all that time, noise, and commotion, the Spider hadn't even twitched a muscle. It just lay there, dead.

He'd get out, and then he'd deal with the parasite gestating inside his chest cavity. Nate thought he could feel a tightness in his chest, and a burning sensation that seems to throb in time to his heartbeat. Maybe it's just his imagination.

_Nothing I can do about that now. Step one: Break out of restraints. Step two: Break out of the room. Step three: Survive an alien killing machine as it redecorates my chest cavity. Step four: Break out of the facility and find a ship. Step five: Sip margaritas on a beach somewhere. Easy._

His restraints were some kind of synthetic fabric, with straps like leather on his wrists, ankles and waist. They were buckled tightly, but his left wrist was loose, he thought. He could wiggle it slightly more than any of his other joints at least. He'd been working at it most of the last hour, and his wrists were raw and red.

Maybe... maybe just some rest first. To make the throbbing in his chest go away. Maybe he was just sore. Nate closed his eyes and tried to get comfortable. It didn't work.

* * *

\- 8 Hours Ago -

This was the fourth time she'd read through the page, but Natasha was no closer to actually understanding the contents. She needed something to keep her going, and that meant coffee.

Coffee. A necessary evil. She'd practically lived on the stuff through graduate school. She left her lab and headed to the commissary. Thankfully it was still the early hours of the morning, so that meant she didn't need to deal with people. The coffee here was terrible, but it was free. _And it was coffee._ Natasha took a sip, and felt her face contort in a grimace. _Mostly coffee._

On the way back to the lab she stopped at Randall's office. As the head of the now defunct Behavioral Science Lab he was her direct superior, and the only other remaining member of the department. They had been temporarily housed in an empty room of one of their colleagues' labs, trying to sort the files, papers, films, and hard copies they'd retrieved from the rubble of their old lab. They kept multiple copies of their work, made daily or sometimes hourly, so there won't be too much of a setback in their work, except in lives lost, and she told Randall as much.

He sighed. "Most of the data is intact, at least. We'll keep most of our funding and be able to start hiring on new hands."

"I know. The outlook is up, I suppose."

"I know it doesn't feel like we'll ever get back to the way things used to be." Randall took a long drink from his own mug, and his eyes were dark and bloodshot. Natasha caught a whiff of something stronger than coffee in his mug.

After a moment of silence he continued. "And the truth is it won't ever be the same. Life changes, and life moves on. We need to do the same."

"Are you alright, sir?"

"'M Fine. I'll have some resumes on your desk tomorrow morning." He checked his watch. "Is it already?... I suppose I should say later this morning. On top of that I need you to witness for a standard L84 incubation. You don't normally perform this duty but... we're short on hands."

A long moment passed before she responded. "I'll have the report upon completion, then."

The L84s always made her feel a little sick. It was a catch all term for any live incubation that required a human subject, who invariably died. The subject was always a convicted criminal on death row, ones who were condemned to die this way or by some other method. But here at least, the company paid the convicts (and thus their relatives) handsomely for their service. They were put under for the entire process. It was all perfectly humane, strictly speaking. It left a sour taste in her mouth.

* * *

The observation room was cold, austere. She imagined this is what the control panel for the automated Class-3J lethal injection chambers would look like. It probably was the exact same layout, knowing the cheap bastards in charge of designing these facilities. Everything's the same. Saved on manufacturing and assembly.

The room was a thin rectangle, with just enough room to cram a couple control terminals along the leftmost wall, while still leaving room for a selective-transparency viewing panel front and center. It was dark, and opaque. Everything else was painted the same shade of high-use, company-issue, sold-their-souls-to-the-highest-bidder grey; floor, ceiling and walls. It made the bright red button labeled "INITIATE" stand out so much more.

Well if she was going to do this, she was going to do it right. This was her job and she'd worked damn hard to get it. Really the computer performed most of the work, she was there as a sanity check for the whole process, making sure the computer didn't botch any of the steps, and double checking the obvious information. If the computer said the subject was 4'10" and 120lbs, but the subject visually appeared upwards of 6' and built like a truck, that data needed to be corrected before it made it into their database proper. _Well that and because law required a live, present witness at any donation of a human life to science. That too._

Quickly she had the terminal booted up, and began the automated logging procedure that would record all the data determined relevant. Subject age, height, body type, injuries, blood type, profession, known skillset. All these things impacted the juvenile that would be the end result of this process. The healthiest humans bore the most prime subjects. The most sickly bore weak and thin subjects. _Garbage in, garbage out, just like everything else in life._

She dimmed the lights in the control room, then lowered the opacity on the viewing panel to "one-way". This subject looked familiar, faintly. She checked over their general structure, and it seemed to match up, more or less. This convict seemed to be pretty beat up, bruising covered most of their visible skin, clothes torn, face swollen and blotchy. They were sedated, and would remain that way through the whole procedure. They wouldn't feel anything at all, it was the only mercy convicts like him were given.

_Good enough. _Natasha cranked the opacity on the panel back to its highest setting. She didn't like to see their faces. Especially not in person, she found. Didn't like to know their name. It's easier that way. For her. She flicked the lights back on to full.

There was someone else in the room.

"Oh good, I worried I'd missed the show."

Her heart felt like it was pounding its way out of her chest. "Christ! Wellan, you almost gave me a heart attack! Knock before you come in next time?"

"What's one more death. Besides, you ought to pay more attention, that's what you're paid to do innit?"

"_I'm paid _to research creatures with dangerous and unstable biology in order to design methods of nullifying the threat they pose to colonists under the wing of Weyland-Yutani."

"My mistake. How is Sleeping Beauty?"

"Unconscious, as is protocol."

Wellan is a sour-looking man, in his mid-30s, maybe early 40s. He was stationed in her previous facility as well, but in a separate department. She'd only met him properly when they were both forced to evacuate their facility, and she'd hated him immediately. His face was gaunt, cheekbones prominent, and the bags under his eyes had their own bags. She'd be surprised if he ever actually slept, instead of running non-stop on stimulants. Nominally he was a low-level administrator and supervisor, but she'd never seen him in charge of anything other than a cup of coffee.

That, and he seemed to derive an unhealthy amount of pleasure at others' misfortune. She'd tell him off, except that he had seniority over her. Just barely. He'd turned his gaze to the viewscreen, as if trying to look through it through force of will.

"I want to see him."

"I've already performed the mandatory live-check of the data."

"I want to see his face, Natasha."

"Why?"

"He's a murderer. Or maybe it's just manslaughter. Who cares, something for the lawyers to talk themselves to death over. How many people died in Clarsus-08? Thousands? I figure enough counts of whatever-it-is, and the difference stops mattering. I want to see the man responsible."

_This convict caused the Incident?_

She dimmed the opacity on the viewscreen, as ordered. She'd lost people too. Colleagues mostly. But also friends, which she didn't make easily. She was too talkative, and asked too many questions, if you believed the gossip. The few friends she'd ever had were dead, now. All she had now was her work, for a company she hated more as every day passed. She'd lost everything that mattered, because of this man. A simmering bubble of hatred rose up in her gut.

And popped with an icy chill as she looked at the convicts face. His face was only faintly familiar. But under the bruises, trauma, swollen face, she recognized them.

_Nate?_

She tried to mask her surprise with a blank look of clinical precision. Wellan didn't appear to notice. His gaze was locked onto Nate, where he lay strapped to the table.

"The Coward." It was an accusation, a judgement, and a condemnation all in one.

_One. I can save one of them. _

"You _will_ pay the price of your crimes. I will make sure of that."

_But I need a plan. For that I need time._

Wellan's eyes looked more awake then she'd ever seen in her life, locked onto the unconscious face of her sole remaining friend. She could use this apparent obsession, for now.

"Wellan, can you take over? I forgot something in my lab."

He turned and looked at her, a silent question in his gaze. Natasha tried to put some amount of hatred she couldn't quite feel into her voice.

"Just don't let him die while I'm not here. I want to watch him _suffer_."

Wellan smiled. It was all teeth, and didn't reach the black, cold pits of his eyes. His response was almost a purr.

"It would be my genuine _pleasure_."


End file.
